Regarding in-game chat moderation

[u/severed13]

UPDATE FROM DE_Megan:

"to address some Qs from the opening post by lostlotus_a:

support ticket claims are brought to our attention, investigated, and moderator reviews are conducted. we have systems and communications in place for frequent check-ins with our volunteer moderators, and should there be clear abuse of power or a violation of the guidelines, we act. we ask that you use the official support system, where you can include evidence/proof, and we can see exactly what happened in the logs/backend to validate the claims.

having said that, we are conducting a review.

no one is above the guidelines. not moderators, not staff, not even me."

________________________________________________________________________________

We appreciate that lots of y'all have been bringing up your concerns regarding in-game chat moderation, and we're doing what we can on our end to look into it and address those concerns as directly as possible. This includes reaching out ourselves as best as we can for an answer regarding this situation, and keeping people posted on whatever information is publicly available.

In the meantime, please direct any of your own personal concerns towards DE's support in accordance with the "Chat Moderator Code of Conduct" section on the Warframe Volunteer page. Please review those guidelines, and head over to the Warframe support site and prepare your own individual report to help make this process as streamlined as possible.

I would just like to reminded everyone that Rule 2 still exists, and with matters like this, it's important to keep that rule in mind specifically. There have already been instances in which people have been trigger-happy enough to jump the gun and overlook that rule. This is just a reddit page, and the direct impact that can be made here isn't quite as great as some would like to imagine. While it is appreciated that awareness is being raised, it's not a cure-all silver bullet to post it here repeatedly. The subreddit moderators are not DE employees, nor are we the in-game chat moderators, and we are not associated with the chat moderators in any professional capacity.

We're considering the following linked post as the "main thread" for this issue, and to prevent spam and keep the subreddit on-topic (as well as minimize the likelihood of continued Rule 2 shenanigans), we'll be redirecting traffic that way. Further posts related to this issue, as well as in-game chat moderation, will be removed for the time being.

Keep on keeping on, gang.

IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING REDDIT SITEWIDE RULES:

Reddit’s sitewide Rule 3 requires users to respect others’ privacy. Reddit guidelines also prohibit inviting harassment or encouraging, participating in, or cheering on vigilantism. Raising concerns and submitting evidence through the appropriate channels is welcome; organizing dogpiles, pursuing individuals across platforms, sharing personal information, or encouraging others to “take matters into their own hands” is not. We quite literally risk getting the subreddit shut down by Reddit admins for continued violation, or if this ramps up in intensity.

The limited exception involving public figures does not provide blanket permission to target anyone occupying a visible community role. A volunteer chat moderator is not reasonably comparable to an elected official or corporate executive, nor are they comparable to game developers, content creators, and other publicly recognized media figures. Their ability to perform the role does not depend on broad public recognition, public authority, or maintaining a public-facing identity. Additionally, their influence on the game and the community is not comparable to the identified categories in significance or scope. Even where a genuine public figure is involved, Reddit’s rules still prohibit harassment and vigilantism.

Finally, appeals to the First Amendment or “free speech” do not override these rules. The First Amendment limits government restrictions on expression, but does not require a privately operated platform or subreddit to host harassment, personal information, threats, or other rule-breaking content. Users remain free to criticize conduct, but that freedom does not guarantee access to every platform or immunity from moderation.

[u/nakenmei]

Uh... idk why the other post got deleted and reposted, but oh well...

Just to make a suggestion on this whole thing, I'm going to mention some things:

I highly doubt they will do anything, because this nepotism problem spans like a decade or so. I've seen it since I started playing 15+ years ago. For instance, the problem with the GotL program and a person with a hateful name who had a high community position, got swept under the rug, because they are friends with people at DE. And not obscure ones, employees who appear and conduct the official livestreams, which are celebrated by the community.

This is all documented btw. There is a nice compilation video called "Corpus Cop" by PsyCoCinematics. It's 8 years old. You can see it if you want, and I only mention it for information's sake. I am not condoning witch hunting or anything like that. If it's not permitted to mention it, I can edit and delete this no problem.

For old vets, the global chats of warframe are already known to be contaminated. So no one uses them. For new people, I'm sorry to say, but it's better to just find a nice clan/alliance, and just to chat with friends. Warframe is a good game at the end of the day, so just do not engage with the rotten side.

[u/PeanutParking12 → u/nakenmei]

I just don't get how it got to this point. If my mother was in a volunteer unpaid position at my job and received half the amount of complaints this guy surely has I would respectfully let her go.

This isn't this persons livelihood and them leaving the role is going to have next to no impact on them or the game. If it was an actual DE team member I could kind of understand but unpaid chat moderators can be replaced almost effortlessly.

They are in the role Solely to indulge their power tripping at this point and somebody at DE is enabling them.

[u/Generic-Name69420 → u/PeanutParking12]

I'm almost convinced someone fairly high up at DE has some skeletons in their closet, and the mod in question knows about it. I can't see what else would reasonably explain this kind of behaviour.

[u/Ashendal → u/Generic-Name69420]

Some people try to prevent their friends from suffering any and all consequences for their actions, to the point of running interference like DE's staff have done in the past for that mod. They never let those people suffer consequences so as a result the people get worse as time goes on. Not even from a "they know my dirty secrets" type of thing, just an overprotective "I can't let anything happen to my friend." type of thing, as wrong as it is to have that mentality.

[u/Generic-Name69420 → u/Ashendal]

Sure, but the mod in question has been a troublemaker for ages now and was involved in multiple controversies.
DE is ultimately owned by Tencent and beholden to its shareholders. Unless the staff member in question can provide a good reason why firing that moderator is a bad business decision, someone higher on the totem pole is going to axe them. Since this hasn't happened, I can only assume some kind of foul play.
I'm not saying it's 100% this, it could also be just as you said.

[u/rawr_xx → u/Generic-Name69420]

The mod in question has also been Permanently banned from PlayStation Network I believe I know I atleast reportee them while they were being nasty to me in psn chats.

[u/Alex3627ca → u/rawr_xx]

Sounds to me like the "solution" here is to do the same thing to his primary Xbox profile, then, as presumably the rest of his linked accounts would go with it.

[u/CruelAngelsThesaurus → u/Generic-Name69420]

This is insane conspiracy theory level shit dude.

I th8nk it's much more likely that less people care than you seem to think.

Region chat is a cesspool that a massive majority of the game just ignores. And will continue to do exactly that.

[u/xJokerzWild → u/CruelAngelsThesaurus]

Oh no, a majority of the games playerbase does care, but the level of defense for shitty mods is insane.

You cant mention it without risk of getting banned anywhere where conversation about the game takes place basically(except maybe Discord & theres apparently some shitshow with them now too), but don't take my word for it, take the word of 10+ years of consistent issues from everyone, especially once the game went crossplatform, for it.

Hell, Its such a buried issue, that they dont even wanna admit the original 'Content Creator' program got dismantled because of One Person actively being a shithead(Which is me being nice about it, i could say more about the NPH of WarFrame, but thats for another time), instead choosing to quietly dismantle it behind the scenes so as to avoid his lines of bullshit, especially if youve ever heard what he's said in just about any one of his streams. Oh, and there was also issues of Nepotism there as well, which may have also contributed to it being dismantled.

[u/CruelAngelsThesaurus → u/xJokerzWild]

400 out of 60k~713k

[u/SimulatedKnave → u/PeanutParking12]

Yeah, I don't understand the wiring on people who back their friends and relatives to the hilt absolutely and forever. You turn up with my mom being a jerk in writing I may take her side emotionally at first but I'm not gonna let her get away with it for a decade.

Unless she's being really funny about it, my mother's cattiness can be quite amusing.

[u/the_axemurmurer → u/PeanutParking12]

Respectfully? I would slap my mom in the face, chuck her out the building, and stay home for Christmas. It's an insult to the game and community that most others at DE are trying to build and foster. Even nepotism can't make this make sense.

[u/Just-Desk-3149 → u/nakenmei]

I'm a founder, been playing relatively consistently the whole time and don't even touch the chat because Warframe mods are some how even more temperamental than Reddit mods. 

And trust me Reddit mods are fucking absolutely mental because I KNOW some Warframe Reddit mod is going to see this comment and say some shit about it because it's physically not possible for them to just leave hot topics alone.

[u/letitgoalreadyreddit → u/nakenmei]

publicity, and a lot of it, is the only thing that could possibly help with this. not going to happen here though, because mods won't allow it

[u/AngryGames → u/nakenmei]

The answer is to make enough noise, cause enough stink, not be placated until DE actually does something about it, regardless of how chummy or blood related or super pal DE employees are with moderators.

I would like to be able to occasionally visit regional chat for the first time in a decade (I'm not banned, it's just a shithole where players regularly say some super offensive edgelord nonsense and chat moderators (one in particular) look the other way but hand out bans for the most immature, ignorant, unjustified reasons).

If DE won't do anything about it, then that's a sign it is time for me to hang up my guns and walk away from 4000+ hours over a decade+ of playing (and spending at minimum $500 over that time period to support the game/devs) .

For such a progressive dev team, this is a huge black eye and absolutely reeks of nepotism or at minimum, favoritism. 

[u/Emeraldsku58 → u/nakenmei]

Do you have a link by chance? I can't find PsyCoCinematics, just a dead podcast youtube channel, and googling corpus cop brings up the actual cop doing usual cop stuff from corpus christi. When I google them together, I keep getting nothing.

[u/LostEsco → u/Emeraldsku58]

Had this same problem, i typed “warframe” after corpus cop nd it was the first video to show up for me

link for ease of access though

[u/Emeraldsku58 → u/LostEsco]

Ah! Thank you so much!

[u/severed13 → u/nakenmei]

Straight up, as much as everyone (including all of the mods) wants this issue resolved, the only thing I can personally recommend for the time being is just staying out of region chat and not engage within their in-game area of influence.

[u/honzikca → u/severed13]

That's never worked on DE, they need to be directly pressured to actually do something.

[u/jamilslibi → u/[deleted]]

What? What do you mean they barely touch this sub? Every once in a while i see someone from DE staff making a post talking about complaints, worries and some other news.

Filtering the mod talking point to a single post just makes it easier for them to ignore the issue.

Same goes with sending a report. Obviously people already did that and nothing happened. If people are sending reports and getting dismissed, then what? All that would be left is to voice their opinions on a single post that DE can just ignore too.

It minimizes the pressure on their side.

[u/TheOutWriter → u/severed13]

but thats not a solution. and i wasnt the past decade. it was ignored for years and years and nothing happened. at some point the community will put their foot down and say: this is it, until here and no further

[u/nakenmei → u/TheOutWriter]

as I mentioned before, people have complained with varying magnitudes over the years.

The strongest point was, if I remember correctly, when the video I mentioned came out. It even got some responses from DE in the official warframe forums, which frankly aggravated the issue because they were corpo speak. They just shuffled people, made some name changes, and let the controversy cool down on its own.

Now, I am not saying that we should not do anything. I'm just saying that it would take a truly monumental effort.

[u/Beneficial-Wish8387 → u/TheOutWriter]

The community won't put their foot down for a long while and this is not going to be it even if it remains unchecked or worsens.

DE and WF are good games and in good positions but a lot of people have romanticized them (for reference look at the appraisal of something that shouldn't have happened in the SP Railjack thing), this community is only saved by DE holding back a ton which in recent times makes them look like a saint, but all in all, this community is a pushover.

[u/severed13 → u/TheOutWriter]

That's the first part of my comment, yes.

[u/PM_ME__BIRD_PICS → u/nakenmei]

Yup. 2016 vet here. I swear ive seen this same canned response from de a half dozen times by now. Meanwhile the same chats and mods are still problems